


harbour

by lisettedelapin



Category: Free!
Genre: ??? - Freeform, Gen, Introspection, Leaving Home
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-15
Updated: 2015-05-15
Packaged: 2018-03-30 15:21:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 964
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3941740
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lisettedelapin/pseuds/lisettedelapin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A sentimental heart can play tricks on the senses; he’s learning that in the sight of a stack of packed boxes that grows day by day, the shelves of his room cleared one by one.</p><p>[before tokyo. haru isn't the only one who thinks a lot in the bath.]</p>
            </blockquote>





	harbour

Makoto pushes one fingertip through the still water of his bath. He doesn’t know if it’s more memory or truth when he inhales and tastes Iwatobi salt in the back of his mouth. A sentimental heart can play tricks on the senses; he’s learning that in the sight of a stack of packed boxes that grows day by day, the shelves of his room cleared one by one.

He has always chased weight in the vapor trail of absence, has knelt in front of the _butsudan_ and tried to curl the smoke of incense around his fingers when following the shape of memorial tablets with his eyes. Over a childhood shared he has formed the habit of catching warmth by folding his fingers to his palm when Haru lets go of his hand; has waited for the gold of Nagisa’s laugh and his quick feet to fade with the breeze after daily goodbyes; opened envelopes signed _Matsuoka Rin_ with always the utmost care, piled them to feel their weight grow.

This, he thinks, is no different. Committing sea salt to his tongue in preparation for dividing a home.

He’s barely skimming the water but it doesn’t stop the light drag of resistance around his finger, the ripples that swell and settle in its wake, and it’s all too easy to imagine fishing boats chugging along the surface. He might be trying to prove something when he draws his knees up to the cool air, blinks at the ceiling, and then slides down by his back so he’s submerged.

He loosens his lungs, watches the tiny bubbles he breathes out, and smiles when he remembers Haru coaxing them from a rectangular framed bubble blower as a child; Nagisa trying to chase them all at once, lips puckered, while Rin would reach and watch them burst upon contact with his fingertips.

Ren and Ran have taken to pouting like Makoto has already left. He laughs gently at the sight, nurses the soft ache that comes with their faces pressed to his chest when he picks them up and places them in their bed, pulls the blankets up to their noses.

They keep tugging at whatever part of Haru they can reach as well, voices searching around _“Haru nii-chan, stay! So onii-chan will stay as well.”_

The first time they said that, Haru had looked up. He and Makoto had given each other a moment’s share of an odd look. Then Haru’s lips had curved, just slightly, elegant as the motion of pencil to paper. Makoto understood.

_That’s not the case, is it?_

And he’d loved Haru so simply, natural as it has always been, when he shook his head in turn.

It’s not.

A train ride away and then walking distance. Growing pains are a part of stretching.

They will have separate paths to walk. When this fact frightens him, he looks at Rin, who came back, and he understands that there is intimacy in giving each other all the instances they can in three different futures. Makoto can only give if he reaches for himself first.

It helps to know that they will do this at the same time. Growing away from each other is not growing apart.

Makoto surfaces and there’s phantom salt tickling his nose again.

He wishes he could take the tepid breeze of festival nights, the sound of crickets in the summertime, and the smoothness of the pot that covers Haru’s pointless spare key; the mountains and the ocean and the mewl of the white cat that meets him at the stairs.

There is something for him though.

Haru has always been the one who understands the world in visuals. Makoto is so much more comfortable trading in words.

But this, he can’t articulate. There’s a steady easing in him when he thinks of his friends and is given fragments. Nagisa and Rin stand at the edge of the pier. Rin tells Nagisa to stretch, reach for the impossible end of the ocean, and Makoto can hear the laugh twinkle from Nagisa’s chest. The breeze curls around both of them; whips their hair and their cheeks and then seems to settle when Nagisa grins at the sight of Rin’s whirlwind smile.

Rin, who carries the impression of someone who even the air chases, might balk if Makoto told him he reminds him of a place as small and grounded as Iwatobi. But then again maybe he would accept such a comparison; he tends to surprise people with the way his gaze is more level than one might choose to believe. Now, the sun begins to set and Makoto sees him in the burnt light. It shifts its glow in bronzes and golds over the silver of fishing hooks and Makoto thinks that Rin is salt and metal and hushed blanketed light over the ripples of the water.

Makoto can taste Iwatobi rain when he watches Haru stand with Nagisa’s arm pressed to his own. He hides a smile from Rin and with the tilt of his fringe across his forehead, he looks towards Makoto to ask without words just what he is seeing.

Haru breathes steadier than all of them; a reminder that the world can be safe. Haru is the tide at its kindest.

Makoto’s mother once told him that bravery isn’t a reflection of just what a person’s fears are; it is whether or not one can push past their weight.

If Makoto is to be honest, there are a lot of things he is afraid of. He always feels like the future is rushing, but there are people who make it easier; they wouldn’t know it but they are the ones who teach him to be steadfast.

Salt carries more than Makoto might let on. This, he has.


End file.
